Chapter 1: Critique and Consequence

There’s a particular kind of guilt that comes with hating a book.

It’s not the quick, and the fleeting kind but the sort you feel when you put a novel down halfway through, deciding it just isn’t for you. No, this is the kind that lingers, that festers, that makes you question if maybe, just maybe, you’re the problem.Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood. Maybe I read it too fast. Maybe I should’ve given it more time.

I tell myself all of this as I sit in my dimly lit room, and hunched over my laptop, staring at the blinking cursor on the empty review page. My studio is wrapped in silence, the kind that only exists in the dead of night, when even the city outside has worn itself out. The muffled sounds of my neighbors moving around their apartments…all of it has faded into stillness.

And my mostly empty coffee cup sits beside me, and the liquid inside it has long gone cold. The half-eaten granola bar next to it taunts me, a reminder that I haven’t had a proper meal since lunch. I should be asleep. I should be doing anything else.

But instead, I’m here. And I am trying to figure out how to put my frustration into words.Because here’s the thing, I don’t want to write this review.

I hate writing bad reviews. Not because I feel bad for the author though, okay, maybe a little but because I know exactly what it takes to write a book. The obsession over every sentence. The way the characters take up space in your mind, and living there long after the draft is done. The slow, quiet panic that creeps in when you start to wonder if the story you’ve spent months, years shaping is actually good at all.

I know what it’s like to love a book you’ve created. Which is why I hate tearing one apart. But there’s a difference between a book that just isn’t for me and a book that feels like a waste of my time. And The Ashen King? That book wasted my time.I flex my fingers, and take a slow breath, and finally start typing.

“The Ashen King is an overwrought, self-indulgent fever dream of a novel, dripping with purple prose and the kind of existential musings that only make sense at 3 a.m. after too much whiskey.”

I pause, and reread it…Maybe “fever dream” is too harsh. I backspace. Type "pretentious mess."

And I Delete that too. I sigh, as I lean back in my chair, and rubbing at my temple where a dull headache has started to form. My eyes directed towards my bookshelves sit across the room, crammed with well-loved paperbacks. Stories that remind me why I love this industry. The books that make me feel something real. The books that feel like home. But this book? This book was like getting lost in a stranger’s house and wandering through rooms full of expensive, meaningless furniture, trying to find a way out.

All of a sudden, my phone buzzes beside me. I glance at the screen and Dad is calling me. My stomach tightens because I don’t want to answer.I haven’t spoken to him in weeks. Not since his last attempt to “check in,” which had spiraled into another thinly veiled critique of my life choices. But still, some part of me wants things to be different.

“picks up the call leila. He is your dad.” I thought and before the ringing stopped I picked up the call and said,

“ Hello, Dad.”

“Leila,” he says, “You still up?”

“I’m working,” I say.

He paused before again speaking, “On what?”

I close my eyes. I can already hear the edge of disapproval in his tone, like my job isn’t real work, like my life isn’t something he understands, let alone respects.

“A review.” I reply and brace myself for the inevitable.

“You spend too much time on those d*mn books,” he mutters. “When was the last time you did something that actually mattered?”

My dad’s words land like a punch. I grip the phone tighter, trying my best to control myself by saying anything which I regret later but here we go again.

“What exactly do you want from me, Dad?”

“I want you to stop wasting your life,” he snaps. “You’re thirty years old, Leila. Still sitting in that tiny apartment, hiding behind books, pretending this…this nonsense you do is a career.”

“You don’t get to decide what my life is supposed to look like,” I shoot back. “I love what I do. Just because it’s not the life you wanted for me doesn’t mean it’s worthless.”

“Love doesn’t pay the bills,” he says, “Do you even make enough to survive? Or are you still scraping by, wasting every dollar on those ridiculous paperbacks?”

“Right. Because success is only measured in paychecks. Because if I’m not making six figures and working myself to death at a job I hate, I’m a failure, right?”

He exhales, like I’m being childish, like I always am in his eyes.

“This is not what your mother wanted for you,” he says finally, and that’s it my breaking point.

“Don’t you dare,” I snapped, and my hand gripping the phone so tightly it hurts. “Don’t you dare bring Mom into this.”

“She would have wanted more for you.”

“She wanted me to be happy! She wanted me to follow my passion, to build a life that made me feel whole. She never cared about money, about status, about any of the bllsht you think matters more than actually living.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted you to end up alone.”Dad’s words gut me because they hit too close to something I already fear. I blink hard against the burning in my eyes, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“I have to go.” I said,

“Leila…?”I hang up the call before he could even finish his sentences. My entire body is shaking, and my hands trembling as I set the phone down. My chest is tight, and my breath comes in short, shallow bursts. I feel raw, exposed, like he’s torn open wounds I thought had healed. I set my laptop aside and stand, stretching my arms above my head. My body is stiff from hours of sitting, and my joints aching with the familiar protest of bad posture. I cross the tiny apartment to the kitchen, and pour myself another cup of coffee even though I know I don’t need it.I don’t even like coffee this much. It’s just a habit at this point.

As I take a sip, I catch my reflection in the microwave door. The dark circles under my eyes and the Messy bun. I was wearing an oversized sweatshirt that I definitely stole from my ex years ago. I look exactly like what I am…an overworked editor with a caffeine addiction and no personal life to speak of. I sigh, and drag a hand through my hair before heading back to my desk.

“I should soften the review. Add something about how, despite its flaws, The Ashen King is still an ambitious novel. That people who enjoy overly lyrical prose might find something to love. That Grayson Hale’s fans will adore it, no matter what I say.” I thought